Hello friends! I’m so sorry that it’s been so quiet around these parts. I’m deep in the creation stage for my next book and it’s been really challenging to shift my focus from the book and back to creating content for this site. I’m going to try to do a bit better, but inevitably things are going to be a little quieter around here until I get this manuscript turned in.

However, I do have something fun to share. As some of you may know, I co-host a podcast called Local Mouthful with my longtime friend and fellow food writer, Joy Manning. We’ve been making the show for a little over two years now and have had it in the backs of our heads for awhile to make a downloadable ebook.

Back in the fall, we decided to tackle that goal and so, with the help of a very talented designer, created a twelve recipe book that we’ve called Resolution Recipes. The name is inspired by turn of the year and the fact that many of us are moved to set food-related goals in January. We wanted to create a collection of recipes that could help you meal plan, meal prep, cook more, and increase your intake of plant based foods (we figured these were some common food resolutions).

The ebook includes Joy’s Instant Pot hummus, my favorite red lentil soup (pack it up in mason jars for a week’s worth of easy lunches!), a tasty tofu ricotta, and a blender vinaigrette made mostly from Sungold tomatoes (having some in the fridge will make you crave salad). We’re selling the book for $5 and if you’re interested, you can buy it here.

This is it. The last day of my west coast book tour. It has certainly been one for my personal record books. I taught six hands-on classes, spent nearly 16 hours demonstrating how to make Strawberry Cocoa Jam, went to ten different cities (in two different countries!), did a TV spot, a radio interview, and spoke at Powell’s Books (huge thanks to Ivy Manning for helping with that event).

I logged countless hours in cars (both a rented Passat and my parents’ trusty Outlander wagon) and managed to recover from a case of the flu in a relatively short amount of time. And best of all, I met so many wonderful people and signed lots of books.

I’ve got a demo and book signing tonight at the Book Larder in Seattle. After that, I drive back to my parents’ house in Portland, give them back their car, and fly home to Philadelphia on Thursday (just in time to make brisket for our Saturday Seder).

I’ll have a recipe up for you guys tomorrow, but in the mean time, I’ve got a few links I want to share.

The interview I did for the Food Show on KBOO (Portland’s Community Radio Station) aired earlier today. The archived version isn’t up yet, but when it is, you’ll find it here. Running Press has also donated two copies of Naturally Sweet Food in Jars to KBOO for their fundraising drive. It’s a great way to support a small radio station AND get a copy of my new book.

And finally, it’s Wednesday, which means that there’s a brand new episode of Local Mouthful available for your listening pleasure. This week, Joy and I chatted about potatoes, Passover, stinging nettles, and more!

One of the inevitable things about writing a book is that no matter how hard you work at making it perfect, there will still be a mistake or two in it when the manuscript goes to print. It happened with Food in Jars (you can find the errata page for FiJ here) and it has happened again with Preserving by the Pint.

At my book events I’ve been hand-correcting every book I sign, but I realize that not all of you are going to make it out to a class or demo. So in order to make the corrections accessible to everyone, I’ve created an errata page so that all the errors and fixes are in a central place.

If you’ve spotted an error or typo in the book that you don’t see listed here, please drop me a line so that I can add it to the list and make sure that it gets corrected in a future printing.

The last couple weeks have been the calm before the storm. If you thought my Southern book tour was a major endeavor, just wait until you see what I’ve got up my sleeve for June and July. Actually, you don’t have to wait at all. The entire summer schedule can be found on my Classes and Events page, if you want to take a gander and plug a date into your calendar.

For those of you in the Philadelphia or New York areas, my next three events are just for you. There are still lots of seats available in both those classes, so grab yours now!

I’ve got a hearty handful of events happening this week and I hope some of you will come to pick up a book or two. You probably know this already, but both Preserving by the Pint and Food in Jars make excellent Mother’s Day gifts.

On Tuesday, May 6, I’m doing a small batch jam demonstration and book signing at the Marple Public Library (2599 Sproul Road) in Broomall, PA. The demo kicks off at 7:30 pm and I’ll have samples for tasting and books for sale.

This Wednesday, May 7, I’m doing a small batch canning demo for the Women’s Studies program at Drexel University. Oops! Just learned that this one is for members of the Drexel community, only. If you’re affiliated with the University, I’d love to see you there!

Saturday, May 10 is a two-fer. From 10 am to 1 pm, I’ll be at Greensgrow Farms (the original, Kensington location) to sell/sign books, answer canning questions, and do a small batch strawberry jam demo (probably around 11 am).

Later that day, I’ll be at Occasionette in South Philly for E. Passyunk Avenue’s monthly Second Saturday avenue crawl. I’ll be there from 5-8 pm with preserves from my pantry and books to sell and sign. I’m also doing a small batch demo that we’ll start around 5:30 pm.

I landed in Philadelphia right around 12 noon on Tuesday afternoon. It was almost exactly two weeks to the minute since I’d left and while the book tour was gloriously fun, returning home is always the best thing of all.

I’ve spent the last day and a half reacquainting myself with home, unpacking bags and folding laundry. I also have done quite a lot of cooking in the last 48 hours. I made a goodly amount of jam and pickles while on the road and helped assemble a meal or two in the company of friends, but there was little true cooking and I missed it.

And so, I’ve made several rounds of breakfast eggs. I roasted every sad bit of vegetable in the fridge and made soup for dinner last night. I prepped a batch of whole wheat chocolate chip cookie dough for the freezer (we bake them a couple at a time in the toaster oven as an after dinner treat). And I peeled two wrinkly tomatoes that I’d left to ripen several weeks ago and made a little batch of salsa.

For lunch today, I toasted a couple of corn tortillas and folded into them black beans, cheese, avocado, sour cream, and generous scoops of the salsa. If a batch of spring salsa sounds good to you (Cinco de Mayo is Monday, after all), the batch I made is essentially the same as this one, only with shallots in place of the onions, and some red chili flakes instead of jalapeño (we didn’t have any). Remember, homemade salsa always tastes better if you make it at least an hour or two before you plan on serving it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Just because I’m home doesn’t mean that the book tour is over. Truly, things are only just picking up. Here’s where I’ll be over the course of the week and a half!

I’ve been showing you all the cover of my new book, Preserving by the Pint, for months now. I thought that since today is its official release date (though Amazon makes such things mostly moot by shipping pre-orders as soon as it has them in stock), it might be fun to show you what it looks like on the inside.

This book is full of tiny batches and was written with farmers market shoppers, CSA subscribers, and container gardeners in mind (though truly, if you’re not among those groups, the book is still for you). All the recipes start with either a pint, a quart, or a pound (or two) because those are the units of measure that so many of us end up with after a trip to the green market, grocery store, or farm share pick-up.

Instead of giving away your excess produce, or worse, tossing on the compost pile, you can preserve it. Make pesto from that giant bundle of Thai basil. Cook excess zucchini down into a creamy, garlicky butter. And transform those alien-like heads of kohlrabi into crisp, tasty pickles.

Unlike my first book, which was arranged by type of preserve, Preserving by the Pint is set up seasonally. The idea is that you can start at the beginning with Spring and preserve your way through both the year and the book. As someone who did essentially that while writing the book, I can promise, you’ll end up with a delightfully varied assortment of things in your pantry and freezer when that year is up.

One thing you’ll start to notice about this book is that while all the recipes do preserve the season, they don’t all do it through canning. A generous handful of the recipes are designed for refrigerator storage and yet others are best frozen. I made the storage choices I did in order to create the best finished product possible.

These marinated sugar snap peas, for instances, are a quick pickle because if you were to process them in a boiling water bath canner, all those spritely peas would lose their snap and crunch. Kept in the fridge, they last a respectable amount of time and are far more delicious.

This quick tomato sauce is one of my very favorite recipes in the book. Most years, I buy a 100 pounds of tomatoes and spend a week preserving them whole or as puree. However, throughout the summer, there are often small deals on cracked or otherwise marred tomatoes at my local market that I hate to pass up.

This sauce makes it possible to spend a dollar or two, invest a little time peeling and cooking, and end up with two half pints of glorious, flavorful pizza sauce from each batch. Because I make four or five batches over the course of the summer, I end up with enough sauce to last all year, but it doesn’t feel like any work at all and costs nearly nothing.

In writing this book, I also worked hard to come up with recipes that solved problems. I often hear from people that they wish they could can caramel sauces. While this sweet pear caramel doesn’t have the creamy mouthfeel of a batch made with heavy cream, it’s a really delicious sauce that can be used in place of traditional caramel drizzles (and if you don’t like pears, try it with peach or raspberry puree).

I am really proud of how this book turned out and am so grateful to Running Press for helping me turn an idea into a beautiful, useful thing.

Finally, it’s time for the weekly giveaway to return. I have three signed copies of Preserving by the Pint, liberated from my stash of author copies, to give away. Here’s how to enter:

Leave a comment on this post and tell me what you think about the new book. Or, if you’re not ready to share your thoughts, tell me about your favorite small batch preserving project.

Comments will close at 11:59 pm on Saturday, March 29, 2014. Winners will be chosen at random and will be posted to the blog on Sunday, March 30, 2014.

Giveaway open all.

One comment per person, please. Entries must be left via the comment form on the blog at the bottom of this post.

Friends! The season of book signings, canning demos, and weekly reminders about all my crazy travels are upon us!

For my first official, post-release event, I’m staying close to home. Locals will find me at the Fair Food Farmstand at Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia this Saturday, March 29, 2014, from 10 am to 2 pm. I’ll be standing behind the cheese case, handing out tastes of my honey sweetened strawberry jam and signing books.

We’ll have copies of the new book on hand for sale, as well as a few of the old one as well (I’m also happy to sign copies of the books that you might already own). Please come out, pick up a book, and say hi! I hope to see a number of you there!

P.S. My cold is finally gone, so you can come out, safe in the knowledge that I won’t pass an early spring bug along to you!

Exactly one month from today, Preserving by the Pint will be released. I am thrilled (and only just a little bit terrified) to share this new collection of recipes with you all. There will be a number of blogger giveaways to celebrate the book when it is available (including one here), but if you don’t want to take your chances with lady luck, you can always pre-order a copy from Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, Indigo, or your local, independent bookseller.

I’m also going to be traveling a ton this spring and summer to share the new book in person. I’m updating the Classes and Events page on a near-daily basis, so please do make sure to check it often for news.

November 20 – Prep for the holiday season with some homemade Edible Gifts at The Brooklyn Kitchen. We’ll cook up batches of Cranberry Chutney and Cranberry Syrup and will dig into the details of boiling water bath canning. Class is from 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Click here to sign up.

December 8 – Pear Cranberry Chutney class at Wyebrook Farm in Chester County, PA. Class runs from 1 – 3 pm and you can sign up by clicking here!

In other exciting news, my second cookbook, Preserving by the Pint: Quick Seasonal Canning for Small Spaces, is now available for pre-order (it will be released on March 25, 2014). It’s on Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Chapters (for the Canadians!). I’m just starting the process of planning my tour to support this book. If you want me to come to your city or town this time around, I’m absolutely game but I’ll need your help. Here’s what you can do:

If you have a connection with book store or kitchenwares shop that hosts author events, make an introduction. Same goes for cooking schools that host guest instructors.

I love spending a morning or afternoon at a local farmers market. If you think I’d be a good fit for yours, hook me up with the coordinator.

Let me know if you want to host a private canning class for your local canning circle (there is a fee for this).

I’m all about the book potluck. If your local canning or food swap community wants to invite me to bring a stack of books to your upcoming gathering, just say the word.

I can’t wait to meet even more of you all this spring and summer. Thanks in advance for all your help.